


not a love story, not a fairy tale

by sungmemoonstruck



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungmemoonstruck/pseuds/sungmemoonstruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire likes Cosette. He likes knowing her because she brings a little light into his life, and as strange as it is for him to believe, it seems as though he brings his own little light into hers, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not a love story, not a fairy tale

**Author's Note:**

> There were no Grantaire/Cosette fics, so I ended up writing one in three hours at two in the morning because they are my favorite characters and I am so completely desperate for them to be bros.
> 
> This is meant as more platonic love than romantic love, but if you'd like to think of it as the latter, I suppose it can be kind of sort of up to interpretation.

When they meet, there isn’t any kind of spark or rainbow, no instantaneous volt of lightning to the heart, allowing them to see the world clearly for the first time. In fact, they probably think as little of each other as possible.

It’s at a party at Courfeyrac’s flat, a small get-together with more alcohol present than people, just as Grantaire likes it. He’s curled up on the couch, drinking and watching his friends shimmy quite awfully to the music that’s almost too loud to hear and, in his humble opinion, definitely too horrendous to listen to in the first place. From his angle of the kitchen, he can see Enjolras’ blond curls poking out of the doorway, where their fearless leader pours over his books on history and politics and democracy, as if taking himself away from his work for _one single second_ would cause the world to burst. Grantaire drinks to the planet and its potential smithereens. The idea of it seems almost poetic, and—with the music blaring as loud as it is around him, pounding through the walls and into his brain—almost plausible.

(He wonders if he even knows what he’s talking about anymore, and then realizes that he doesn’t care. He drinks to that, too.)

Just as he tries to shift and get a better view of Enjolras’ face, his view is blocked by a blonde halo and the brightest blue dress he’s ever seen. He blinks a few times, taking it in.

“Are you in charge of drinks?” asks the dress—or rather, Cosette, Marius’ new girlfriend, the not-so-secret reason behind this whole extravaganza. As Courf had put it, “Might as well meet her now than when we’re stuck in a jail cell, after we’ve all been arrested and Marius has to bail us out.”

Grantaire nods slightly and returns to his drink as she pours one of her own. When she walks back to Marius and Grantaire’s eyes wander back to corner of Enjolras’ face, they don’t give each other another thought.

 

The second time they see each other, they find that they’ve more than hooked themselves into each other’s brains.

It’s at a meeting at the Café Musain, a tiny coffee shop that barely holds the lot of Les Amis. Enjolras is shouting about freedom (again) and Jehan is writing prose on the arms of Courfeyrac and Éponine (again); Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet are wrapped up in blankets as Musichetta braids Joly’s hair and Bossuet braid’s Musichetta’s (again); Combeferre is switching back and forth from note-taking his philosophy homework to note-taking Enjolras’ words (again); Feuilly and Bahorel are playing a quiet game of cards (again), and Grantaire sits in the farthest armchair in their circle, a sketchpad in his lap and a pencil in his hand, ready and waiting for his statuesque muse to take a breath and stand still for maybe a millisecond.

Again.

When Marius finally arrives, naturally, Cosette is with him. They take the empty loveseat beside Grantaire, trying to pay attention to Enjolras but finding each other too beautiful and too wonderful to keep from staring into one another’s eyes for five seconds, a sight Grantaire wouldn’t have noticed if Marius had been able to keep from giggling so much. Only when the lovebird leaves to grab coffee for himself and his girlfriend does Cosette take notice of the disheveled artist to her right.

“Are you drawing something?” she whispers, leaning over the arm of the loveseat to take a look at the sketchpad on Grantaire’s lap. Oh, how he’s drawn the most perfect rendition of a blank page.

“‘Attempting’ is a better word,” he murmurs back. His eyes are still on Enjolras. (Again.)

“You’re Grantaire, aren’t you?” she says after a moment. “Resident Keeper and King of the Drinks, Marius called you last Thursday.”

Grantaire snorts softly at this. “I like that. I wear my crown crooked and proud.”

He can see her smile out of the corner of his eye, just as she leans back. He turns to her then, and there’s a moment where he’s almost breathless at the sight of her—he doesn’t know if it’s the sun shining in through the window, framing her profile perfectly, or if it’s her halo of golden locks (and her hair can’t be described as anything _but_ a halo), cascading gently down her shoulders like a river, or just the smile still on her lips from his comment or her expression of gradual captivation as she listens to Enjolras and becomes wrapped up in his words of future and tomorrow but—

Well then.

Another sketch of Enjolras will have to wait. His hands are idle. He needs a muse _desperately_ , and unlike _some_ people, she’s not moving like there are ants in her pants, all tiny and bothersome and individually named “Revolution.”

He watches her watch Enjolras and draws.

 

They see each other more frequently at the meetings after that. She almost always comes along with Marius, and on the times Marius arrives alone, Grantaire finds himself missing her just a little bit. When she does join them, she always manages to strike up conversation with him at least once, to ask about his drawings. He eventually shows her the one of her profile, explaining through slight sheepishness that there was truly nothing else that he felt inspired to draw and no, he wasn’t trying to be creepy.

The sketch is a little sloppy and smeared, but she beams at him all the same.

He notices little things about her. The playing with her necklace when she watches them all, like she’s taking them in for the first time and still trying to decide her feelings about them all (they’ve welcomed her with ease, but he can understand her feelings; they’re not the most underwhelming bunch, that’s for sure). The biting of her lip when she’s enthralled in a story she’s reading or one of Jehan’s poems or Enjolras’ speeches. She brings a book with her everywhere, even if she doesn’t always bring it out of her purse. She prefers tea to coffee. She hugs people a millisecond longer than most hugs last. She brushes her hair back behind her ear too much when she’s flirting, whispering with Marius in the corner.

(It’s not creepy of him to notice these things either—he notices little things about all his friends, like how Jehan sometimes dots his I’s with flowers, or how when Joly’s exhausted, he tends to absentmindedly hum till he falls asleep; how Éponine still glances at Marius even though she truly adores Cosette and knows that Marius will never glance at her the way he glances at his girlfriend; the twinkle in Bahorel’s eyes when he’s making a joke; Feuilly’s particular fondness for red Skittles; the soft look Musichetta gets as Joly and Bossuet fall asleep around her; the chewed-up eraser on the tip of Combeferre’s pencil; how Bossuet’s favorite hat is the bright pink fedora Grantaire had gotten him for his last birthday; how Courfeyrac’s face lights up when one of his friends comes to him for advice; the almost nearly very _slightly_ look of deflation on Enjolras’ face whenever Grantaire shoots down his ideas and claims them nonsense. There’s so much more that he could name, but there wouldn’t be enough time in the day to talk about his friends’ antics, and if knowing these things _is_ considered creepy, then at least he’s being equal.)

 

After she asks him about his art, he talks to her about her what book she’s reading. She brings a new book with her every time, ranging from every genre imaginable. He finds out that she can play piano when she plays a song for them one night at Courfeyrac’s apartment. She bakes cookies and smells of flowers, but she took fencing as a teenager and has the reflexes of a cat, as proven by when Bossuet accidentally surprised her and she hit him in the nose. (She never stopped apologizing.)

When they sit together, wherever they are, she likes to play with his hair (“Do you even _own_ a hairbrush?” she teases). She reads snippets of her current book to him as he sketches her. When the whole gang goes out and gets wasted, and they travel back to Courfeyrac’s place (it’s the nicest of all their apartments, with enough room for anyone and everyone to pass out on the floor), the two of them duet at the piano together, singing as obnoxiously along with the others as they can.

Grantaire likes Cosette. He likes knowing her because she brings a little light into his life, and as strange as it is for him to believe, it seems as though he brings his own little light into hers, too.

 

It’s storming when he first sees her break.

He’d just woken up on the couch at Courfeyrac’s (again) when she texts Éponine, who had left her phone on the coffee table the night before. He would have just ignored the phone completely had an added seven texts not been sent, each vibration waking Grantaire from his precious mid-afternoon nap. He snatches Éponine’s phone and is just about to tell the person on the other end to fuck the hell off when he sees who the messages are from.

 **Cosette:** _Are you there?_

 **Cosette:** _I need to talk to you._

 **Cosette:** _It’s important._

 **Cosette:** _Well, I suppose it’s not that important._

 **Cosette:** _I mean, it IS important, but there are other things of far greater importance, too. World hunger, for instance. It’s nothing in comparison to world hunger._

 **Cosette:** _I just remembered, you’re at that conference at Gavroche’s school, aren’t you? I’m such an idiot. Ignore everything I’ve said. Sorry for bothering you._

 **Cosette:** _If you could call when you have a minute, though, I’d really appreciate it._

 **Cosette:** _Sorry._

When Grantaire gets to Cosette and Éponine’s dorm, it’s pouring down rain and he’s practically soaked to the bone. He knocks on the girls’ door and waits, and then Cosette is before him, in an oversized sweater and her halo/hair so messy it could rival his own. Her nose is swollen and her eyes are puffy and they look at him in disbelief.

“Grantaire, what are you—?”

He holds out Éponine’s phone. “She left it at Courf’s.”

Cosette takes the phone gently, her bottom lip trembling as she stares at the floor, and then, all of a sudden, she’s thrown her arms around him and is sobbing into his already soaked shirt, getting her own clothes wet in the process. He wraps his arms tightly around her and holds her as she cries. (“Do you even _own_ a hairbrush?” he murmurs in her ear, twirling her tangled curls in his fingers, and she lets out a small laugh that’s mixed in with her sobs.)

She and her father had a fight, as it turns out. This is a very big deal—her relationship with her father, the professor of the world religions class at the university, is as valued to her as her relationship with the rest of Les Amis, if not more so. But apparently her father has his concerns when it comes to her relationship with Marius, and she’s a little too curious for her own good when it comes to her father’s secrets, thus resulting in an argument allegedly more intense than Enjolras at a rally. She says she would have called Marius and talked to him about it, but he’s been so anxious about making a good impression with her father, she couldn’t bear to see his face when she told him her father didn’t feel quite as confident.

Grantaire never lets her go, and she doesn’t stop crying for an hour or so. When he watches her now, he can hardly believe that this person who looks so small and brittle is the same as the ever-singing, ever-smiling Cosette. When he watches her now, he sees someone who’s been through hell and back. He drinks enough to recognize the signs.

They spend the evening watching trashy reality shows and commenting about how they should really change the channel to something much more worthwhile, but the remote is so far away and neither one of them are in the mood to stop holding each other, so on the trashy television plays.

They fall asleep together, tangled in blankets and their frazzled hair and drying clothes. When Éponine comes home, she doesn’t think twice of them, and just shuts off the TV and goes to bed.

 

She’s seen him broken, too.

(Of course, who hasn’t?)

She holds his hair back when he’s vomiting over the toilet, rubbing his back and whispering words of comfort. She makes him tea and wraps him in a blanket and runs her fingers through his hair and reads to him till he falls asleep.

She takes his hand whenever Enjolras puts him down, or whenever she catches him gazing at his Apollo too longingly.

When he and Enjolras finally get together, she celebrates with texts telling the dirtiest of jokes, some of which might make even Courfeyrac blush. Grantaire finds himself happier than he’s been in ages when he’s with Enjolras, but he doesn’t delude himself into thinking that their arguments are over and done with. Sometimes they fight so viciously that Grantaire drinks till it feels like the world will just swallow him whole, and he stumbles into Cosette’s arms for a night of more tears and trashy television and tea. Tea is a hug in a cup, she tells him.

(He prefers her embraces to the tea’s.)

 

Whenever he and Enjolras get arrested, she doesn’t scold him. She could shout a thousand things about how he could have been injured or killed, but she doesn’t raise her voice in the slightest. He can feel her concern, almost as soon as he gets home from the police station; she emits anxiety from her skin like radio waves. He calms her down by placing his lips to her knuckles and allowing her to cling to his hand till she deems her levels of nervousness are at a minimum.

(She doesn’t scold him when he drinks too much either, but that’s for entirely different reasons. No one can say much when it comes to his drinking. Sometimes she’ll hide the bottles from him, though, at least till he finds them or buys more.)

 

She’s not his angel, she’s not there to save him from himself. Her halo (the metaphoric one, not her hair) isn’t even as pronounced as it had been once, long ago. She gets crabby during finals week and practically throws him out of her dorm because she says that his existence is too distracting. She hates being told what to do when her mind is set to do something else. They disagree sometimes about books and characters, for she’s far more accepting of some characters than he is, and he thinks some of the happy endings with which her stories end are unrealistic. She gets petty and huffy when he sides with Marius in fights and sometimes he thinks he might just loathe her when she sides with Enjolras. They misunderstand each other’s words and it leaves them alone in their respective silent treatments for a day and a half at the most.

Eventually, one of them feels compelled to make amends, and then it’s only moments after they make up when he’s teaching her to draw and she’s telling him about her newest favorite book over Chinese food and Disney movies, like nothing bad had ever even happened.

(“You’re a Disney princess,” he’s told her on multiple occasions, but when she asks which one, he shakes his head and says, “None of them. You’re your own princess.”

She giggles and grins, pausing from her inked doodles on his arm to think. “If I’m a princess, then you’re my prince.”

“I can’t be your prince, Marius is your prince. Your freckle-faced, dopey-assed prince.”

She hits him lightly as she laughs. “You can too be my prince! If I’m my own kind of princess, you can certainly be your own kind of prince. We don’t have to be married, we can just eat cupcakes and watch the sunset and rule over the kingdom with love and fairness.”

“Don’t tell Enjolras. I reckon he’d overthrow any kingdom, even one as rainbows and unicorns and sparkles as ours.”)

 

On her wedding day, she saves a dance for him. If there was ever a day where she looked more radiant than ever, it was that day, with the sun drenching her in light and flower petals floating in the breeze around her. He won’t admit it to anyone but Enjolras (and that’s only because Enjolras was sitting right beside him at the time and saw it as plain as day), but he let a tear or two slip down his cheek as he watched her happiness swell at the altar. Enjolras took his hand, giving his jaw a quick kiss, and together they watched the next phase of their friends’ lives begin.

(“Did you brush your hair?” she asks as they slow dance at the reception.

He shrugs, placing a light kiss to her forehead as she looks at him smugly. “Don’t expect it to become a habit or anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”)

 

Of course, he saves a dance for her on his wedding day. It’s not nearly as fairy tale as hers; he and Enjolras had both agreed on a ceremony made up of just them and their friends. They hold it in the middle of Courfeyrac’s living room, Jehan officiating the ceremony—courtesy of online certifications—and it lasts only about ten minutes, ending with so much alcohol that everyone passes out for almost two days, but it’s sweet and utterly perfect because it’s with the people they love. Éponine’s idea of walking down the “aisle” with the French flag over his head like a veil was a nice touch.

(“How did Prince Grantaire and Princess Cosette end up?” he asks over the blaring music, about which the neighbors are most assuredly calling the cops. He twirls her and she almost stumbles into Feuilly, but catches her balance easily.

“Happily ever after, of course!”

“That’s no good! Practically _every_ story ends like that!”

“So? That’s how some of the best stories end!” She grabs his hands and they’re spinning and laughing and jumping and suddenly he feels that electric shock that’s called living.)

 

If Enjolras is his muse, his angel, the love of his life, then Cosette is his sunshine, his comfort, the lines on the pages of his sketchpad. She is tea, because tea is a hug in a cup and she is a hug in a person.

If Marius is her heart, her song, the love of her life, then Grantaire is her dance, her laughter, the words on the pages of her books. He is the breeze around her light, sometimes gentle, sometimes powerful, and always there in the dark.

Maybe they do live happily ever after, but Grantaire prefers to just call it “living ever after,” and with the roll of her eyes and a smile that warms his heart, she agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is manicpixiedreamfedora.tumblr.com, message me if you want!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
